


Nyctophobia

by decadent_mousse



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Commitment, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:44:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6342547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh is afraid of the dark.  And also commitment, but mostly the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nyctophobia

New moons could eat Josh’s ass.  Cloudy weather could, too, for that matter.  The two of them  _ together _ was a practically a nightmare.  Visibility outside was pretty much zero, and visibility inside was even less than that without the lights on.

He flipped off the light.  

The room immediately went pitch black, as expected, and his heart plummeted.  He couldn't see shit.  There was no moonlight -- no __ light of _any_ kind at all -- and it was freaking him out.  Badly.  His cheeks burned with humiliation.  He was eighteen, not five.  He thought he was over being scared of the dark -- at least this badly -- but apparently he wasn't, and it was a fucking embarrassment.

Then a nightlight blinked on and he started breathing again.  Chris's concerned face was suddenly visible in the dim light.

"Are you coming to bed or...?"

"Uh," he said, trying to act casual even though his heart felt like it was tripping over itself.  "Yeah.  Yeah, I am."

"Sorry," Chris said as he padded across to the bed and slipped beneath the covers.  "I thought that'd pop on a little faster."

He’d been surprised when it had popped on, period.  Chris had never owned a nightlight for as long as Josh had known him.  The guy could be a scaredy cat about a lot of things -- not that Josh was in any position to point fingers -- but the dark had never been one of them.  It was really, really painfully obvious who the light was for.  

"You didn't have to get me a nightlight."

"I didn't.  I got  _ me _ a nightlight."

"Right."   
  
It was embarrassing, but also kind of touching, that he cared enough to do that for him.  When they’d been kids, he’d used to leave his bedroom door cracked open a little whenever Josh slept over, and he'd never said anything, but Josh had known then like he knew now that it was for him.   
  
It wasn't a bright light.  It just barely cast a faint yellow shadowy tint to everything, but it was enough.  It was the not being able to see anything around him that was killer, feeling like the world didn’t exist beyond his nose.  This... this worked.

"It'll turn off after awhile," Chris said.

"Okay?"

"I just wanted to give you a heads up."

"I'm not a toddler, Christopher, you don't have to baby me."

"I'm not trying to baby you," he protested.  "I just want you to be comfortable.  You don't have to get pouty about it."

"I'm not pouting."

Chris leaned in close and brushed his nose against Josh's.  "You're pouting."

Josh scowled, but his heart wasn't in it.  

"Remember our first sleepover?"

"Vaguely."

He remembered it pretty clearly, like he remembered most events in his life featuring Chris pretty clearly.  He sure as hell wasn't going to admit it, though, because he knew where he was going with this.

"You were miserable the second we went to bed, but you didn't say anything.  When I asked you what was wrong, you wouldn't tell me.  It took like a year to get you to open up about it, and you're still just as stubborn.”

About this, and everything else.  He didn’t say it, which Josh appreciated, but it was there between them -- unspoken.

“Stubborn?  Me?”

“My point,” Chris continued, “is that it's okay.  Everyone has their thing that kinda freaks them out.  It's nothing to be embarrassed about.  Especially not around me, I mean… when have I ever teased you about anything?”

“Do you want the full list or the abridged version?”   
  
“Okay, lighthearted teasing, but not like when it's something serious.”   
  
“This  _ isn't _ serious.  It's just--”   
  
The light flickered off, and even though he'd had fair warning it startled him.  Not badly, but enough to derail his train of thought.   
  
“You okay?” Chris asked softly.   
  
"Of course.  Who needs a nightlight when I've got you to light up my life?"

"Wow," Chris laughed.  “That's really smooth.”

“Too cheesy?”

“I dunno, I think it was about the right balance of cheesy and romantic.”

It was too dark to see much of his face, even as close as they were, but Josh didn't need to see his smile to know it was there, and something in his chest loosened a little.

Chris leaned in and nuzzled his face.  “I’ve always got your back.”

“I know.”

“I'll put nightlights in every room in the apartment, if it helps.  I'll put one in the bathroom.  I saw a toilet light online the other day--”

“Don't.”

"Are you sure?  They had a green one that makes the toilet seat look like some kind of UFO."

"Don't," Josh repeated, though this time he couldn't keep the laughter out of his voice.  "Seriously, don't."   
  
Chris heaved a big sigh.  "Okay, but when you accidentally pee on the floor in the middle of the night, don't say I didn't tell you so."   
  
"I generally flip on the light when I go to the bathroom," Josh pointed out.  "So... kinda redundant, anyway."   
  
"Redundant, but cool."   
  
"It's your toilet, man, if you want to put a light in it that bad, who am I to stop you?"   
  
"What if it was our toilet?"

The word “our” stretched out between them until it just sounded like some incomprehensible nonsense word and it took him a minute of repeating it in his head before he was finally able to say: "What?"   
  
"What if... you know, maybe, what if... you moved in?  With me?"

"You're asking me to move in?  Because you want to share your _ toilet _ with me?"  

He hoped his teasing tone did an okay job of masking the thundering of his heartbeat, because Chris was asking him to  _ move in with him _ .  If he was asking him to move in, that meant that this was serious, that they were really doing this.  And that meant that this was something he could seriously fuck up like he generally fucked up most good things in his life.   
  
Except Chris, he realized.  No matter what else went to shit, Chris was always there.   
  
"Well, not  _ just _ my toilet," Chris said.  "My apartment, my bed, my kitchen, my life in general."

"You pretty much share all those things with me already, bro."   
  
"Exactly!  So, really, you practically live with me already.  Why not make it, you know, official?"

He had a good point.  Josh spent most nights at his place.  He still had his own place, sure, but he was spending less and less time there.  Half of the clothes in Chris's closet were his.  His toothbrush had its own place on the bathroom sink.  He'd even started keeping a small stash of his meds in the bathroom medicine cabinet so he wouldn't have to constantly remember to bring some over when he spent the night.   
  
Making it official sounded... official, and that scared the hell out of him, but...   
  
"Okay."   
  
"Okay?"   
  
"Yes.  I'll... fuck, man, let's do it.  Let's move in together."   
  
"I'm really, really glad you said yes.  Especially since I, uh, already made you a key."

As close as they were, Josh could practically feel him vibrate with joy.  It felt surreal that they were having this conversation in the dark, in bed, a minute before crashing for the night.  It was just like any other night, except for how it wasn't.  Maybe that's what real, serious relationships were like -- just casually deciding to move in together during conversations about toilets.   
  
He fumbled around until he found one of Chris's hands and squeezed it.   
  
"No to the toilet light, though."   


 

~

 

They dozed, for awhile, and it was all fine until Josh startled awake.  He couldn't remember the dream he'd been having, but he had a vague, creeping feeling that it hadn't been a good one.  Waking up in utter darkness wasn’t reassuring, either.

He felt around in the dark, trying to pinpoint where in bed Chris was.  He must have rolled over at some point, dragging most of the blankets along with him.  He pressed himself against his  back and snaked an arm around his chest.  Chris hummed sleepily and rolled towards him, draping an arm over his shoulders.

"You okay?"

"Yeah.  Sorry, didn't mean to wake you up."

"Mmm."  

Chris lightly kissed Josh between the eyes and it quickly became obvious that he  _ hadn't _ woken up, because within seconds he was snoring softly again, face smushed against the top of Josh's head.

He laid awake for awhile, staring into the darkness.  It felt less intimidating with Chris wrapped around him.  It wasn't like him being there made whatever his subconscious thought was lurking in the shadows any less likely to eat him or whatever, but he felt safer somehow, anyway.  He wasn't sure if it was enough to be able to fall back asleep, but he felt a little less like he was staring into the fucking abyss.

Chris's slow, even breathing  _ was _ kind of hypnotic, though, and for a guy who had to wear ten layers to keep warm at the slightest whiff of cold weather, he got warm when he was sleeping.  It was a potent combination and soon Josh started to feel drowsy, like sleep might actually be an achievable thing and not just some abstract concept.  He pressed his face into the crook of Chris's neck and pulled the blankets up tighter around them both.  If he closed his eyes, he could pretend the room wasn't completely dark, and if the room wasn't dark, it didn't feel like it was closing in around him.   
  
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Chris made a soft noise and gave him a gentle squeeze.  It scared him a little how easily he could imagine spending every night of the rest of his life like this, enveloped in the arms of this nerd whom he loved.  There weren't a whole lot of things about the future that he was certain about on any given day.  A lot of times he didn’t really feel like he had one.   
  
Chris was always sure, even when Josh wasn’t.  No matter how up in the air things felt, he always had faith in him.   
  
Jesus, he got sentimental when he was tired.  He rubbed at his eyes.  

With Chris's face firmly planted on the top of his head, it was hard to kiss him back, but he managed.  An awkward kiss under the chin to go with an awkward between-the-eyes kiss.  Tangled together in their bed --  _ theirs _ \-- Josh drifted back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not really apparent or all that relevant, but this fic takes place in an AU where the prank and the rest of the events of the game didn't happen.
> 
> [Toilet nightlights are a real thing, by the way.](http://www.amazon.com/IllumiBowl-Toilet-Night-Light-SHARK/dp/B00S7PAFK0/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1458837437&sr=1-1&keywords=toilet+led+light) And I can almost guarantee you Chris already ordered one.


End file.
